/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.3120167]

Half-Life/GoldSrc thread
Show us some comfy levels and obscure mods.

[Anonymous No.3120231]

>>3120167

Lesser-known Mods that are fun as hell:

Cantuna
SurpriseHL(and ps07 too I guess)
Rocket Crowbar
Wasteland HL

Best Comfy Level

Jumping from the top floor in ahl_bxht...still makes me smile. ALSO, the ~secret~ in ahl_nocredit

[Anonymous No.3120249]

Top: OpenGL on a modern computer
Middle: OpenGL with 90's hardware
Bottom: Software mode

I've really missed out by playing Half-Life in OpenGL all these years.

[Anonymous No.3120307]

>>3120249
Doesn't the other modes play the game in the quake engine?/atleast it felt like it when I tried it out

[Anonymous No.3120314]

>>3120167
>>3120231
>obscure mods
Anyone play Half-Life Bumper Cars? I worked on that one.

[Anonymous No.3120480]

>>3120249
No. Putting up digital vibrance in nvidia's driver options doesn't count as 90's hardware. The only real difference between 90's hardware and todays hardware for OpenGL for any game that runs all the same extensions is that modern hardware can run Transparency Supersampling on older games. You can also run AA without dipping into unplayable framerates. Yet you somehow fucking missed putting both of those on for modern hardware. Though you also somehow fucking forget that even 90's supported anisotropic filtering which you've managed to leave off all fucking three for hideous as fuck distance textures.

Great fucking job at being an asshole. Asshole.

[Anonymous No.3120542]

>>3120249
Also if you want nearest textures you can put that on and not have the god awful texture crawl and shimmering that comes with software mode.

[Anonymous No.3120607]

Oh my, are the Goldsrc threads back? They're my favourites :3

Been getting into an old project recently, and although progress is slow I'm loving every relaxing minute of it. Doomed starships are comfy. Having fun just building stuff.

Is anyone playing Sven Coop on Steam?

[Anonymous No.3120647]

>>3120480
>digital vibrance
Wow, the fucking ignorance in this guy. You were generally right about leaving some stuff off, but if you think light falloff behavior is a saturation slider then I don't know what to say. So what is the Source engine then? Turn up the exposure or contrast slider until the whites are blown out?

[Anonymous No.3120776]

>>3120542
But look how washed out the sunlight is, and that disgusting transition between shade and sun. It's a flaw of drivers that don't work properly with it.

[Anonymous No.3120784]

>>3120607
The map seems so dark.

[Anonymous No.3120812]

>>3120480
Way to miss the point, moron. Of course you can do high quality AA on new hardware, but this is comparing apples to apples what the game looks like without adding all kinds of extras.
For your information, all three screenshots are from the same PC, but I went through some driver hacks to make the lighting feature work to make a point. There's no modified vibrance or gamma, just higher dynamic range.

[Anonymous No.3120827]

>>3120784
It's set on a sort of Space Titanic and large portions of the lighting system have been buggered due to disastrous space stuff.
I'm still fiddling around with texture lighting values, trying to keep compile times down too. Just trying to get a feel for colours and atmosphere and shit.

[Anonymous No.3120882]

This is made under Goldsrc.

[Anonymous No.3120903]

>>3120882
Holy shit. Was that ever released? It seemed to drop off the radar.
Goldsrc has come a long way since USS Darkstar, Sweet Half-Life and Gunman Chronicles.

[Anonymous No.3120941]

>>3120167
god-tier mods:
The Specialists
wanted
CS duh
DOD

Scientist Hunt entertained my 14 yr old brain

poke646 is supposed to be really good but I've never played it

existence always looked cool but there was never enough people to play with and no bots

Gunman Chronicles looked awesome and I think 007 Nightfire runs on Goldsrc as well

[Anonymous No.3120998]

>>3120941
>god tier
>CS
>DoD
Newp

[Anonymous No.3121018]

>>3120998
Yeah, over the years I must have forgotten that they were both shit mods that nobody liked.

[Anonymous No.3121306]

So like, is Half life 2 allowed here? I suppose not but it is a half life thread...

How the hell were you supposed to know to build a ramp with debris to get over this barricade?

[Anonymous No.3121308]

>>3121306
and forgot my image

[Anonymous No.3121324]

>>3120249
gl_overbright 1

I'm just leaving this here.

[Anonymous No.3121336]

>>3121306
Is this a joke? You're suppose to open the gate.

[Anonymous No.3121361]

>>3121336
>Is this a joke?
No, and another thing, how were people supposed to figure out they had to throw barrels down the hole here

[Anonymous No.3121363]

>>3121361
Then stack them to get up to this pipe

[Anonymous No.3121369]

>>3121363
And then in the next room, grab a crate, and walk along the gate to get to the other side?

[Anonymous No.3121391]

>>3121361
>>3121363
>>3121369
lol

[Anonymous No.3121681]

>>3121361
Are you mentally challenged?

[Anonymous No.3122114]

>>3120998
They were fun if you weren't a faggot.

>>3121361
Wow, you're amazingly dense, the puzzles in HL2 aren't hard at all.

[Anonymous No.3122123]

>>3122114
>Wow, you're amazingly dense, the puzzles in HL2 aren't hard at all.
>missing the joke this hard
Wow, you're amazingly dense.

[Anonymous No.3122129]

>>3121361
>>3121363
>>3121369
>he didn't flood the room and swim out
good problem solving on your part for finding an alternate way, but goddamn you're still a fucking moron.

[Anonymous No.3122135]

>>3121391
>>3121681
>>3122114
>>3122123
>>3122129
You guys are being trolled.

[Anonymous No.3122281]

>>3122135
So we can mass report him right?

[Anonymous No.3122287]

>>3122129
>>3122114
>>3121681
>>3121391
The entire point is to reference a one DSP, but also to find any way around the actual puzzle that I can, this would be my first run through the game.

Also fuck invisible ceilings they keep stopping me from avoiding parts of the game.

[Anonymous No.3122413]

PRUNE JUICE

[Anonymous No.3122469]

>I was only pretending to be retarded.

[Anonymous No.3122526]

>>3120607
As a new mapper who's been in it for a few months I have a couple questions that will go unanswered. How do you do it anon? Every time I start a project I get barely into it before I shut it down entirely and never work on it again. What's your process for creating levels? Do you draw it out on paper or go off the top of your head?

[Anonymous No.3122565]

>>3122526
I block it out first, sometimes on paper but I mostly bash it straight out in Hammer, then compile and play a lot.

Start with the blocky basics, and get a feel for the space you're creating. Where's it going? What's the point/function of each section? Can it be cut and the gameplay remain the same, or is it absolutely necessary?
Doing it this way is easier and more rewarding than coming up with something detailed that plays like shit and needs to be cut down to even run.

It definitely helps to draw it out first, unless you're absolutely sure of the thing you're going to make.

Think of the theme, and the kind of spaces that would suit the environment. Think about player movement; for example, I love vertical spaces and depriving players of ammo, so in pic related there's a slight navigation puzzle to reach the middle tier and a way to lure enemies into turret fire because I only have a crowbar.

Motivation is the bitch though. I guess you just have to keep it interesting for yourself. Put some time aside and look forward to making stuff. Put some movies on in the background, a podcast or some music. If it feels like work, it's probably not quite right.

A lot of rambling there but hopefully something makes sense!

[Anonymous No.3122585]

>>3122565
Thanks Anon, it does make sense yeah. The blocking it out bit I had down but the rest seems like good advice, I'll be sure to keep it in mind. I'm taking a whole lot of random jabs at making maps and not really thinking it out too much which is probably where my problems stem from.

[Anonymous No.3122615]

>>3122526
>>3122565
Blogposting like fuck but never mind.

In the pic above, you can just about make out the navigation puzzle; starting at the door at the top, you can either take the elevator to the bottom, take on the turret with very little cover and ammo then jump on another elevator opposite to the middle level,
or
start at the elevator, jump down onto the vent then down to the floor where the blue screen and crate are, then run around to the ladder on the other side and down.

The first way is the quickest and most obvious, but with risk. The second way is longer and slightly more taxing, but on the way you collect stuff and cover more ground. It's my lame way of making the player explore a little and get to know the space, seeing as I'm hoping to have this hub area connected to different levels as decks and it will be backtracked through.
Anyway, fuck my rambling noise.

>>3122585
The only other thing I can think of is to get a few different gameplay ideas down (platforming, action, or puzzle sections for example), give them the same visual theme and try to link them naturally. In other words, a small section at a time to make something bigger.

There's definitely someone more knowledgeable on all this hanging around here who has better advice, but hope that helps a bit.

[Anonymous No.3123962]

>>3122615
I got a quick question because I'm doing some more Hammer stuff today. Source Hammer has a thing where if you select a brush and draw a new one it retains the general location of the selected brush and can be handy for making walls quickly. Is there something like this in GoldSrc Hammer or am I boned?

[Anonymous No.3123989]

>>3123962
Yeah, you can select a brush and create a new one while keeping your selection. Handy for lining things up.

[Anonymous No.3124087]

So with source 2 coming out do you think we'll see another golden age of half life mods?

[Anonymous No.3124119]

>>3120231
>SurpriseHL(and ps07 too I guess)
MY NIGGA
I think you and I are two of like a dozen people that played those. Has that guy made anything since? Any Source stuff?

[Anonymous No.3124167]

>>3124087
We kinda need a Half-Life in Source 2 for that to happen wouldn't you think?

[Anonymous No.3124780]

>>3124087
That's pretty much the only reason for which I would wait for Half-Life 3 to surface. A fresh engine and hopefully a resurgence in modding like we had almost two decades ago.
At this point, Valve could release a Notepad file of how the story ends, explaining the gman's motivation because really it's all about him. A simple .txt file.
But if there's a new engine coming, that should mean a new game, and with a new game comes new mods. And that's what I can't wait for.

[Anonymous No.3124858]

>>3120607
>>3120827
>>3122565
>>3122615
There's a way to make the lighting look cool. Use -gamma 1 on the RAD compiler, but increase the brightness of all the lights (might be a parameter for that too).
Post results.

[Anonymous No.3124862]

Is it worth playing it on the dreamcast instead of the PC?

[Anonymous No.3124915]

>>3124858
Isn't that like using the contrast control on an image in PS? I can't be trusted with such power.
You know more than I do about these things, so post an example. I want to know what I'm in for, and how to do it. Is there a command to tell the RAD compiler an action using the F9 compile in Hammer?

[Anonymous No.3125070]

>>3124862
Play it however you can. PC version is better than the Dreamcast, but the Dreamcast version is on the Dreamcast.
It has been so many, many years and I still love the word "Dreamcast".

[Anonymous No.3125194]

>>3124915
Use the expert compiling mode where you can add parameters manually. The gamma parameter just changes the lightmaps in the map. The default is 0.5, (gamma corrected), while using 1 performs no gamma correction.
It's technically less realistic, but it's subjectively cooler and more vibrant.
This is c1a0 with -gamma 1

[Anonymous No.3125442]

>>3125194
Not him but for the stuff in >>3120607, you should increase the power of your texture lights. I know you want it mostly dark but it is actually more weird to see all those neon strips not emit anything past two feet.

[Anonymous No.3125547]

>>3125194
>>3125442
Thanks for the advice anons, I'm an absolute amateur to be honest, and I appreciate the help!

To >>3125194; thanks for the advice! I'm not totally sold on that look, although it looks sweet as fuck in that shot, since one of the problems I've had with changing lights.rad is strong colours with no ambience; basically strong colours with too much contrast. I've changed the values of the standard white strip texture and a few others to appear slightly more "blued" (this is evident more on the white light texture, turned to a more "electric" blue shade) to match the kind of atmosphere I'm looking for. It's less jarring than it was before and emits far more light, pic related.
Again, thanks so much for that RAD tip. I'm still learning as I go after all these years, and would never have come across that if you hadn't mentioned it.

>>3125442
I agree totally about the neon strips, so I've changed and increased their values accordingly. I've scaled back the other texture lights to make these strips more prevalent as I'm using them more widely, and your advice matches every piece of feedback I've received before. But now I know how to change these things. Thanks a lot!

Thanks anons :3

[Anonymous No.3126190]

>>3121336
I used the gravity gun to push the buggy over the first time.

[Anonymous No.3126286]

>>3125547
There is one weakness in Half-Life's lighting, it doesn't use textures to calculate radiosity. Quake 2 did, and that made dark surfaces not bounce the light everywhere.
/vr/ beta release of it when?

[Anonymous No.3126510]

>>3120167
I got Half Life Generation physically today for less than 7 bucks. It's an older edition though (2002 I think). Should be possible to run it on Windows 7 or newer systems with mods and all without needing an exterior program, right? Or is it better to just use Open GL like in >>3120249
?

The mods in >>3120231
look pretty interesting so I guess I will have fun with those certainly.

[Anonymous No.3126529]

this might as well be the the mapping thread

anyone need a self-claimed gimmicks expert that otherwise can't finish a complete playable map?

[Anonymous No.3126531]

[Anonymous No.3126879]

>>3126529
>>3126531
>gif

[Anonymous No.3127052]

>>3124780
HL2 Mods never really seemed to take off like HL1 did.

[Anonymous No.3127313]

>>3127052
That depends. There are tons of Source mods, but few mods based on Half-Life 2.
It makes sense if you ask me. Half-Life mods are good not because of the engine, but because Half-Life is a good game. Half-Life 2 mods are good because they can do so much with the engine.

[Anonymous No.3127319]

>>3127052
Gonna disagree with you there. A lot of the early Steam games which were actually popular were standalone versions of HL2 mods like Killing Floor and Garry's Mod. Kinda gets muddied by the HL2 mod vs HL2 engine distinction but a lot of them use assets from HL2.

[Anonymous No.3127320]

>>3126879
>caring

[Anonymous No.3127370]

Can someone tell me what the absolute cheapest PC build would look like that guarantees that I can play HL, CS 1.6 etc. at a constant 100 fps?

My laptop even though only 1.5 years old just doesn't do it for some reason and I tried all the god damn tweaks, lists of console commands that give me the absolute lowest possible settings and yes, I turned vsync off. Still my framerate is all over the place, usually between 25 and 45, sometimes at like 80 (small room, looking in a wall, etc.) and sometimes as low as 7-15 in wide open areas. I just wanna be able to reliably play HL at 100 fps but for some reason it's not happening. So I like the idea of a desktop PC with a bigger monitor anyway as it seems like a better gaming experience and therefore I just wanna build one as cheap as possible (old used parts are fine too) that will fit the criteria. I'm not interested in anything more than that, I just wanna play HLDM, CS and TFC.

The recommended system requirements seem awfully low and I really don't know shit about computers, so I if someone could help me with that, it would be much appreciated.

[Anonymous No.3127375]

>>3127370
Just wanted to add that I understand if nobody wants to spoonfeed me but I'm lazy and thought it's worth a shot.

[Anonymous No.3127393]

>>3127370
You might as well get a budget gaming PC that can run way more than Half-Life.
Integrated graphics are powerful these days, but the OpenGL drivers are shit.
A GTX 950 is a good choice, anything cheaper has low performance-to-price value.

[Anonymous No.3128691]

>>3120314
My friends and I played it somewhat recently. Hell I made a shitty video with some of our shenanigans in that and in International Online Soccer.

[Anonymous No.3129835]

>>3124780
I recall one of the developers saying they needed to finish off the story in a video game because that's how Half-Life is told. Then I heard they've got movies in the works for Half Life and Portal and I got confused. At any rate I really hope they stick to the design philosophy of the first two games because I fucking love how they play.

[Anonymous No.3130021]

>>3127052
As someone who was obsessed with Half-Life modding and Goldsource - from model hacking, reskinning, level design, interfaces, and contributed to a couple mods - I can say Source didn't take off because of the engine.

Techncially you can create a Source mod yourself, but the amount of effort and man hours you have to put into it doing something is doubled and tripled compared to Goldsource. Even very simple things like hacking, rigging, and compiling a model should not be that complex.

Want to add a texture to the game? Convert it to the shitty Valve™ texture format, write a complimentary text file describing the material which is required. The amount of texture maps that you have to take care of is doubled because you need normal maps now. Don't forget to export it with the correct DXT settings, including those mip maps. Oh and mapping textures are now mixed in with model textures.

Compare that to what you need to do for Goldsource. For mapping textures, make a WAD package, import your 256 color bmp and make sure the resolution is an integer of 16, hit save. Load that WAD into Hammer. For model textures, compile your texture also with a 256 color bmp with the same integer of 16 rule. Maps are .bsp files, and they go into /Half-Life/your_mod/maps. Models are .mdl, and they go into /Half-Life/your_mod/models/. Even simple concepts like directory trees are a fucking mess on Source.

But here's the final nail in the coffin, Valve keeps updating the Source engine like the Episode 1 engine (HDR), Orange Box engine (throws the rule book out the window), L4D engine, and then I stopped following it. Black Mesa Source was delayed because they probably had to switch engines.

Doom and Half-Life share this quality, where it's simple enough that one guy can do everything and not have to stress out that much. Which means more content, more frequently, more creativity from individuals and teams in the form of basic Half-Life-ish mods and total conversions (NS, TS.)

[Anonymous No.3130076]

>>3130021
Is that a model made low-poly for Half-Life or something else?
It's pretty cool to see high detail crammed into as few polygons as possible.
It's a shame that nobody takes advantage of dynamic lights in Half-Life mods.
It's used in Opposing Force when you carry a flag, and it lights your model with gourad shading.

[Anonymous No.3130689]

>>3130076
It's probably from one of those low polygon challenges on 3D modelling forums for the sake of skill and fun.

If by dynamic lighting you mean like viewing some other player's flashlight radius, that shit tanks framerates, like if you're playing Sven Coop and everyone has their flashlights on at the same time.

[Anonymous No.3130727]

This asshat just killed the savior of humanity with a bridge.

[Anonymous No.3131050]

>>3130689
Quake did it just fine. Every rocket and muzzle flash would light up the surrounding surfaces. I don't know how much it affected the frame rate.

[Anonymous No.3131209]

>>3130689
This is how tf2 would like with the engine of sims1

[Anonymous No.3131876]

>>3131050
If I recall, Quake's dynamic/flash light had lower fidelity than Half-Life. Don't know about Quake, but Half-Life's framerate was definitely affected by the amount of flashlights you had in the same view. I think it had the same effect if you turned on fullbright. It's weird that removing lighting actually worsens the framerate.

[Anonymous No.3131926]

>>3120231
>Surprise

Came here to post this. So many weapons all with ridiculously over-the-top alternative firing modes. The airstrikes are my favourite.

[Anonymous No.3132915]

Is there any interest in a weekly get together for playing random mods? It'd be nice to fill a server every once in a while and play some stupid shit like Brain Bread, Bumper Cars (and other actually good mods) that are dead. I'm willing to spring for a server for a month long trial if we can get anything going. I've run them before so getting one up and running shouldn't be too much of a hassle or anything. The problem is just how many people we could feasibly get interested.

[Anonymous No.3133040]

>>3132915
>I'm willing to spring for a server for a month
Every nostalgia threads usually go like this, if anything it makes me feel bad someone is dropping money on something so uncertain. Everyone nostalgias over it but nobody really joins in, and if they do, it lasts for a day. /v/ groups like Serious Sam and Unreal Tournament are pretty persistent though, but they were already very established. The /v/ Guild Wars guild is very dead.

[Anonymous No.3133568]

>>3132915
http://steamcommunity.com/groups/goldsourceautism#

[Anonymous No.3135610]

>>3126879
made those before you could webm on /vr/

[Anonymous No.3137843]

>>3133040
I mean, that's why I was asking. To test the waters. A month of a server is like $20 for a decent one so it's not exactly a big deal.

>>3133568
Checking it out. Thanks.

[Anonymous No.3138025]

So Doom, Duke3D, Quake, Thief, etc. all have giant images recommending the must play and significant mods for their respective games.

Is there one for Half-Life?

[Anonymous No.3140258]

Anyone mapping?

>>3138025
Haven't seen one, but I scoured an old, old hard drive for some cool single player mods for Half-Life:
>Todesangst 1 and 2
>Edge of Darkness
>Someplace Else
>Poke 646
>They Hunger
>USS Darkstar
>POV
>Wanted
I can recommend any of these to start with.

[Anonymous No.3140432]

>>3140258
Mapping right now. Trying to nail the reflection.

[Anonymous No.3140707]

>>3140258
Thanks!!
That screen looks good too. Good level of detail and nice lighting.

[Anonymous No.3141705]

>>3140258
Please alpha release.

[Anonymous No.3141837]

>>3140432
That is so difficult in Goldsource, in Unreal you simply select the surface you need a reflection on and check 'translucent' and 'mirror'. No need to duplicate geometry.

[Anonymous No.3141860]

Wish i had aome screenshots from when i played on RP servers for the specialists was some pretty comfy shit. I miss those days. Pretty sure the game is completely dead now.

[Anonymous No.3141862]

>>3141837
In Goldsrc I'd spend two minutes making a semi-transparent floor and cloning a room, then about an hour trying to figure out what would be reflected and where, i.e. doorways to rooms without "reflective" brushes. It used to melt my brain.
Really cool effect though, and there's something basic and totally charming about seeing that in an old engine. It's like a pet mimicking the physical movements of their masters.

Pic related, look at it. It's just lovely.

[Anonymous No.3141896]

>>3141837
>>3141862
Fuck technology, Goldsource caveman master race. And in >>3140432 the special sauce was giving the upside down geometry a variant texture with a fade to black gradient.

[Anonymous No.3141912]

>>3141896
>Goldsource caveman master race
YES!
>giving the upside down geometry a variant texture with a fade to black gradient.
This is fucking genius. I've never come across that, ever.
How's the mapping going? Any screenshots?

[Anonymous No.3141916]

>>3141912
No that was the most recent screenshot and I just came home.

[Anonymous No.3142028]

>>3141705
Aw man, I really haven't done enough to warrant that. I can put a .rar together of what I've got if you like?
There isn't much to be honest, just a bunch of half-arsed "doomed starship" areas slapped together with no real pacing until I whip it into proper shape.
At first I just wanted to make a few maps to keep me occupied, then I started thinking about adding original music cues, textures and sounds, and now I've got a few pages of A4 notes on how to make it an actual thing.

But yeah, if you'd like I can put a .rar together on Mediafire. It would be awesome if I could get some feedback on it, if you wouldn't mind?

[Anonymous No.3142041]

How fucked am I if I want to make GoldSrc levels on Linux?

[Anonymous No.3142050]

>>3142041
There are binaries for Jackhammer for Linux.

No source code unfortunately, so BSD users like me are fucked.

[Anonymous No.3142059]

>>3142050
>BSD
How is BSD? I've been experimenting after all the bad shit about Windows 10 was announced, and I was gonna try it. What's BSD'S edge over certain Linux distros?

Also, I kinda didn't trust Jackhammer because the website looked shady, but I'll give it a shot, I guess.

[Anonymous No.3142073]

>>3142059
I mostly use OpenBSD out of preference. It's cohesive and has nice documentation. The kernel and userland tools are all developed as one system, unlike Linux.

As for Jackhammer, yeah, I have a serious problem with trusting closed source Russian software, too. But it worked fine on Windows.

[Anonymous No.3142168]

Decade old issue here. When you make custom textures and stick them in a WAD, Wally boosts the gamma and they appear bright and washed out in editor and game. I remember reading about a fix somewhere but I don't remember. I don't want to darken my textures beforehand because that seems counter intuitive.

[Anonymous No.3142192]

>>3142168
I'm using Wally with Photoshop for my textures, and I've never come across that. My only guess is that somehow Wally isn't saving or translating your textures in the right format. What game are you making textures for?

If it's Half-Life, I've found that making a new texture to specific dimensions in Wally, then selecting the blank canvas, copying then pasting into Photoshop saves some headaches because of Half-Life's strict limits on bit depths etc. (if that's even the right term) because PS automatically detects the properties of the image on the clipboard.

Silly question about a decade-old issue, but are your programs up to date? Can't think of anything else that would cause that problem, sorry.

[Anonymous No.3142387]

>>3142028
Go ahead.

[Anonymous No.3142404]

>>3141862
>>3140432
As cool as it is to see this in game. It kind of ruins it for me that you can't actually dynamically reflect everything. I don't understand why Valve just didn't implement it. Quake had it in OpenGL, and Unreal did it in software. Even the leaked Half-Life alpha had the feature from Quake.

[Anonymous No.3142410]

>>3142168
Try making a WAD with Qlumpy.

[Anonymous No.3142446]

>>3142404
Yeah it's a shame but Half-Life worked around it and didn't make it obvious that it couldn't do reflections. It would have been cool but didn't really affect the game in any big way.
I guess it was an extra thing in the late 90s that in 2016 should be a standard feature but for some reason is still not there.

[Anonymous No.3142478]

>>3142387
http://www.mediafire.com/download/cacw1q36eomdc2y/fb_ship+Half-Life+WIP+-+April+15+2016.rar

This is all I have that's fit for playing in any way; areas with proper textures, lighting and gameplay stuff in place.
I hope it's not too crap and thanks a lot!

[Anonymous No.3142482]

>>3142404
Half-Life alpha also had real shadows too. Although I wish that Counter-Strike 1.6's blob shadow was made standard in the engine in the first place.

>>3142410
Will try. I've been searching for an alternative to Wally. No texturing editing needed, I just want to import bmps and WAD them up.

[Anonymous No.3142616]

>>3142482
The final game had shadows too. The console variable was removed in a patch, but Sven Co-op added it back.

[Anonymous No.3142629]

>>3142446
You don't say.

[Anonymous No.3142643]

>>3142629
Deus Ex mirrors didn't work properly but at least it was immersive; something expected when you look in a video game mirror in a video game bathroom.
But these days, the big AAA video games aren't simply video games any more. The more they strive for realism, the more they get away from it.
I don't get it, but there it is. At least we have brilliant old engines to play around with.

[Anonymous No.3142715]

>>3142643
What I don't get is why reflections are such a hard fucking thing nowadays. I mean, if it's too processor heavy for a realistic reflection there's nothing stopping them from doing the old two maps and a character model trick.

[Anonymous No.3142735]

>>3142715
I don't get it either. Maybe it's just too hard. I can't do it using Hammer, it's just way beyond me, but no doubt there's someone here who can.

Maybe devs are hoping for DirectX to save them/do the work for them. I just don't know. Devs these days will seemingly cut corners to meet deadlines; a classic example being Bethesda with Skyrim. They put their snazzy, one-off release date before their product.
But it's not even *that* processor-heavy if used for effect.
In Goldsrc it will cost you many vital polys to create a weak illusion of a mirror. But we're not in 1998 any more.

Come to think of it, having reflections isn't such a big deal for games really. But what if it was?
There could be a whole crowd of subgenres that work around that feature with their own mechanics. It would definitely be interesting in shooters, as it always has been.

[Anonymous No.3144090]

>>3142735
It shouldn't be a problem if it's limited to small rooms.
A typical way of doing it is to use a render portal that renders the same room twice flipped. Now if you just use a mirror in a restroom, it should be easy enough to render two restrooms. It's what Doom 3 did.
What might be a problem is that modern games use deferred rendering, I don't know if that has limitations.

[Anonymous No.3144103]

>>3142715
How did MGS2 do it? Was that the same trick or was it reflections?

[Anonymous No.3144107]

>>3142478
Decent design, the details don't lack.
The only thing I can think of that I would like to see is more environment sound entities. Vents should have that reverb effect that are used in the Half-Life campaign.
Also, which side of this do you like best?

[Anonymous No.3144115]

>>3144103
It probably used the same trick, but in a non-euclidean way, differently from MGS1 which had the room clone hardcoded into the model.

[Anonymous No.3144272]

>>3132915
>>3133040
>>3133568
Has anybody here heard of this mod? I've tried it out, it's interesting http://www.moddb.com/mods/master-sword-continued-111

[Anonymous No.3144457]

>>3144272
I used to follow and play Master Sword a lot. It was a RPG in the veins of Elder Scrolls (generously putting it) that was persistent no matter which server you went to. But your client side character save was also encrypted to prevent cheating. Didn't stop people from making training maps though. It was a janky mod but man I fucking loved it. I was just thinking yesterday I need to plan on adding Hostile Intent and Master Sword to the Half-Life Bumper Cars roster if I even get that far into updating it beyond just new maps.

[Anonymous No.3145351]

I just looked more into the 2013 Steampipe update for Half-Life & Source. Besides adding v-sync which was found in the video options, it also has a gl_ansio (not spelled aniso) for AF, and a -nomsaa command line option. If there's a command line to disable MSAA, then how would I enable it? I'm curious about the in engine anti-aliasing, so this doesn't concern video driver control panel stuff.

[Anonymous No.3147157]

how hard is it to start mapping in HL1 nowadays?
Ive done a couple shitty TF2 maps but otherwise not much. Its it a mess with compatability?

[Anonymous No.3147217]

>>3147157
It's super simple, I honestly believe it's simpler than Doom because Doom is made by raising floors to make walls and other weird restrictions. With Half-Life, it's literally just using Lego blocks. However there are a few rules that you must follow.

Always turn grid snapping on so everything connects.

Always begin every block (a block is called a brush) with a null texture (tells engine to not render) and then apply your real texture to the desired areas where the player will see. This makes sure you are saving as many polys as possible.

Brush surfaces will also subdivide everytime the texture repeats. So do not scale the texture too small or your floor is going to subdivide into hundreds of polys. Subdividing will also occur if brushes intersect in a way where they don't align well, think a pillar brush sitting off center on a tiled floor. My image demonstrates how things should attempt to be grid friendly. Which leads me to my next point.

Since subdivision happens depending on how brushes touch each other, you can make things bypass subdivision by converting world geometry (brush) into an entity (use func_wall for solids, func_illusionary to walk through it.) Entities don't subdivide when they touch world geometry. So why not just turn everything into entities? Because world geometry culls everything you can't see and can cast shadows on the lightmap. If your wall is an entity, it means any objects and polys will still render everything behind that wall, bad for optimization. That wall will also not cast shadow. Making brushes into entity is reserved for making fine details, like my barbed wire, angular yellow stripes, caution sign, and especially the black/white tile floor so it doesn't subdivide the shiny chrome brush right below it.

[Anonymous No.3147231]

>>3147217
I forgot to mention, my main lavender floor is actually one large brush. So is the black/white tile brush, the chrome base right below it, and the wooden pillar too. The orange subdivision lines is showing you how the engine will subdivide it due to the texture repeating. Do not ever make each tile an individual brush if you interpreted the image too literal.

[Anonymous No.3147258]

>>3147217
Huh, thats good. Is there a list of programs I should use along with Hammer to add models or textures or such? Some more recent tutorials just for HL1?

[Anonymous No.3147272]

>>3147217
Which version of Hammer do you use?
I haven't made maps for Goldsrc in ages. Back then I would just use an older version of Hammer, but it lacked some of the features the new Hammer has, like model previews in 2D and 3D views.

[Anonymous No.3147410]

>>3147258
>>3147272
Valve Hammer Editor 3.4 is official, 3.5 is a small update, an exe that you overwrite 3.4 with.

There's Jackhammer that is unofficial but enhanced with stuff like drawing UV map as demonstrated in >>3147217, rendering transparency and additive, stripping null faces, showing the skybox, all right in the 3D viewport without needing to compile your map and testing in-game anymore.

In order to be able to make 3D models and sprites appear in the editor, you need the newest FGD for your game that tells certain entities (like player spawn or sprite) to show a model.

If you feel ballsy, you can just open the FGD file in notepad and change the entity line yourself:

>@PointClass base(PlayerClass) sequence(1) studio("models/player/gordon/gordon.mdl") = info_player_start

[Anonymous No.3147427]

>>3147410
Forgot about animated textures animating in the 3D viewport too.

[Anonymous No.3149154]

>>3128691
>I made a shitty video with some of our shenanigans in that and in International Online Soccer.
Sharing is caring my friend.

[Anonymous No.3149260]

>>3121306
>>3121361
I know it's a joke but this is seriously the type of person Valve hires to playtest.

[Anonymous No.3149705]

>>3149154
Well, hopefully it gets at least one or two chuckles then.

https://youtu.be/vqFh5Bd1Mh0

[Anonymous No.3151389]

>>3147217
how hard to make quake 1-2 map?

[Anonymous No.3151546]

>>3147410
Thanks anon. Jackhammer was just what I was looking for.

[Anonymous No.3152175]

>>3151389
Never tried the Quake engine, sorry.

>>3151546
Another enhancement I forgot to mention was Map Properties > Sky name is now a droplist containing all skyboxes available from the active mod AND Half-Life itself with thumbnails. This means you will never have to google for "Half-Life skybox list" ever again. Don't forget that the sky texture in the 3D viewport actually does preview the skybox in real time too.

[Anonymous No.3152359]

>>3152175
>This means you will never have to google for "Half-Life skybox list" ever again
people did that? i just opened the .tga files

[Anonymous No.3152369]

>>3152359
Better to see the complete 360 degree unwraps all listed one after another.

[Anonymous No.3153885]

>>3147410
Just downloaded Jackhammer, thank you for your help. It looks so much better than regular Hammer.

[Anonymous No.3154653]

http://web.archive.org/web/19990508124933/http://gameoftheyear.com/

Half-Life was so over that its url was www.gameoftheyear.com. Holy fuck that's hilarious.

[Anonymous No.3156420]

>Page 9
Bump

[Anonymous No.3156453]

I kinda miss playing some old school Half-Life mods online like the original Ship. Also, I always wanted to try that Firearms mod online that came on the same CD as Counter-Strike 1.0 back in the day, but never had a chance.

>>3154653

To be honest though, internet urls didn't cost alot in the 90s and there weren't that many companies hoarding them so getting an address like that wasn't hard.

[Anonymous No.3157114]

bump

[Anonymous No.3157129]

I'm currently making a small site and it's like a brain dead walkthrough on how to get started on making a map for Half-Life. Not sure if I'll ever finish it because I never finish anything, like my own maps.

[Anonymous No.3157141]

>>3157129
got a link, or is it not even hosted?

[Anonymous No.3157212]

>>3157141
Just started yesterday in html and css.

[Anonymous No.3157224]

>>3147217
>Always begin every block (a block is called a brush) with a null texture (tells engine to not render) and then apply your real texture to the desired areas where the player will see. This makes sure you are saving as many polys as possible.
I've never heard of this and have to question it. Given that GoldSrc is directly derived from the Quake engine and uses rebadges of most of the same tools to compile its maps, why would it matter what texture you apply to the 'outside' of brushes when they're all culled in the compiling process?

Also, if the null texture works anything like the clip or skip textures from Quake, you're looking at a very easy way to get a miniscule leak someplace and having to track it down.

[Anonymous No.3157247]

>>3157224
>null
If let's say your vending machine (just a rectangular box) fits snug against a wall, the back side of the vending machine is culled by the compiler automatically since it's intersecting with the surface of the wall. However using null textures like breathing air ensures that you are saving a couple polys at the top of the vending machine and other hidden surfaces that you may not be conscious about. I know it's not a lot of saved polys, and maybe you do want to see the top side, but that's just my trivial example. It's a proper practice to create a block out of nothing and then apply textures to only your desired faces. In the very, very early days you would apply the sky texture to unwanted faces, but null makes it so the engine doesn't render the polys at all.

>clip
The clip texture, at least in Half-Life, is just an invisible wall. If your ground has very complex detail like tiles blown out of the ground but you don't want your player elevation to constantly jump up and down stepping on all those tiles, make all your micro detail func_illusionary so you pass through them, and lay down a flat block with the clip texture so the player is walking on an invisible flat floor.

[Anonymous No.3157262]

>>3130689
I actually love this. Low poly models are just wonderful to me.

[Anonymous No.3157269]

>>3157247
Interesting. It must be a GoldSrc specific thing because I'd honestly never heard it mentioned for old id tech; common practice for Quake is to just apply the texture you want to the whole brush (one or two sides if it's a pillar or something you need to have differently textured faces), adjust how it lines up, and move on knowing qbsp will strip away everything you don't need. Maybe it's just something that comes with the various new quirks of GoldSrc.

> If your ground has very complex detail like tiles blown out of the ground but you don't want your player elevation to constantly jump up and down stepping on all those tiles, make all your micro detail func_illusionary so you pass through them, and lay down a flat block with the clip texture so the player is walking on an invisible flat floor.
That works about the same as Quake, then (hence where the entity name, func_illusionary comes from- illusion walls hiding secrets in Quake).

[Anonymous No.3157280]

>>3157269
>culling
Yes the compiler will generally cull and strip out what you are showing, but what you are showing is contents outside of the level. You are forgetting about optimization within the map. The detail and micro detail within there definitely have headroom for further optimization, except the human effort is definitive and not just letting a compiler decide. If you make a billboard distant from the player's reach, the compiler won't know to cull the backside because it's not intersecting with anything, and for the end user there is definitely wasted poly.

[Anonymous No.3157309]

Is there a reason why func_walls are not used often in Half-Life maps? It seems to create so many unnecessary polygons. For example, the desk in the beginning of Half-Life. The floor has tons of polygons to align with the desk. Would there by anything bad about just making the entire desk a func_wall and not interfere with the floor like that?

[Anonymous No.3157314]

>>3157280
So when you say optimization, do you mean when compiling or do you mean in-game? Because you're correct that the brush compiler won't know to cull the backside of the billboard, but VIS should handle that so it doesn't get drawn from the player's point of view anyway.

[Anonymous No.3157684]

>>3157314
I'm talking about human optimization, as a second layer of optimization to back up what machines interpret, and also as plain good craftsmanship and striving to be the best level designer possible.

[Anonymous No.3158587]

>>3157309
It might have been for a possible PS1 port, since the PS1 can't into z-buffering resulting in polygons popping on top of each other.

[Anonymous No.3158610]

>>3157309
Valve themselves couldn't into optimization themselves, truth be told. Can't really blame them, they rebooted the game during development after an E3 appearance. Finished that shit within a year. Fast forward to today, Valve has a good track record of not knowing what quality assurance or quality control means. They're an ideas and business company.

>>3158587
>PS1 port
Oh believe me I've thought about this long and hard. The real issue isn't with how many polys you can downgrade Half-Life. The real issue is with how you're going to format the save files. Due to the nature of Half-Life's gameplay, you will either need to create a save state for every quick save and auto save. You cannot use a password system to get around this unlike mission based games like Quake 2 or Final Doom. Every monster corpse or entity changed in your world needs to be recorded into the save file. One PS1 block holds maybe 64kb if I'm not math retarded, meanwhile a single .sav file for Half-Life is about 850kb.

[Anonymous No.3158636]

>>3158610
A PS1 memory card can only hold up to 128kb, so more like 8.5kb per block to work with.

[Anonymous No.3158669]

>>3158636
I knew the math looked wrong. Google keeps telling me PS1 memory cards were 1MB. No way in hell can you do save states or passwords for Half-Life, unfortunately. PSP is the best bet and there are some Quake homebrew that plays Half-Life levels but they're janky as fuck.

[Anonymous No.3158810]

>>3158610
Saves are overrated. It wouldn't hurt much just to have some checkpoints in places where you are not expected to backtrack.
I think the real problem on the PS1 would be making the game stay story rich. Animations and voice acting were novel features back then. You'd need a lot of RAM just for all the data Half-Life needs simultaneously.

[Anonymous No.3159273]

>>3158810
Sure. But those things can always be downsampled with things like audio and animation (Halo is keyframed for only 30 fps, even on PC.) With saves you can't really get around it, flushing states from the previous chapter is risky. Blocking the path behind you is a terrible videogame trope and doing it in Half-Life is essentially messing with the whole "one long journey" concept.

[Anonymous No.3160026]

>>3130689
If they could put this on my psp or any portable i think I'd fucking die.

[Anonymous No.3160546]

bump pls, I love Goldsource threads.

Just installed Jackhammer, going to make stuff.

[Anonymous No.3160573]

Will Adrian Shepard ever return?

[Anonymous No.3160578]

>>3144107
Hey, thanks anon and sorry I couldn't respond when you posted.

I don't think this project is going anywhere now to be honest, and while I really do appreciate the lighting suggestion, the biggest problem I had was making the white strip lights less jarring as they're a common theme throughout the map pack.
The right-hand side looks pretty neat, but from a gameplay point of view I think it would be too much of a contrast to be comfortable on the eyes. High contrast visuals are fine if the art style is built around that theme, but I've realised that I don't even have a theme, just a series of grey rooms (using textures that someone else made, and I don't even know who) with stupid coloured lighting and garish white strips. If I ever make my own textures to a better standard in the future then maybe it might be worthwhile, but I'll admit that right now it's going nowhere but it's been a lot of fun making it.

I have to thank you again for downloading it anon, and thanks for your advice. That lighting trick is something I didn't know before. Thanks a lot!